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C. J. HOLMES. From a photograph. 


SIRCHARLES HOLMES 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1924 


ACKNOWLEDGMENT 


THANKS are due to “ Vogue” for the permission 
kindly given to reproduce Howgill Fells, and to 
those owners of Sir Charles Holmes’s pictures and 
drawings who have courteously permitted photographs 
to be made of them for the purposes of this volume. 

Acknowledgment is gratefully offered also to Sir 
Charles Holmes for the kind assistance he himself has 
given, and to Mr. C. H. Collins Baker, whose know- 
ledge of Sir Charles Holmes’s work and devoted help 
in the difficult task of choosing examples from it, have 
proved equally invaluable. 

All copyrights, unless other acknowledgment is 
made, are strictly the property of the artist. 


Made and Printed in Great Britain at 
The Mayflower Press, Plymouth. William Brendon & Son, Ltd. 


Se 


21. 
22. 


ListOF. PLATES 


C. J. Hotmes. From a photograph. Frontispiece. 

DorkING MILL. (1894). Etching. 

THE CHAPEL. (1895). Eéching on zinc. 

NortH WALsHAM. (1895). Etching. 

WIMBLEDON COMMON. (1900). In the possession of the Artist. 

THE GASOMETER. (1900). Jn the possession of the Artist. 

OLD SaRuUM. (1902). In the possession of the Artist. 

THE SHRECKHORN AND FINSTERAARHORN. (1904). In the possession of the 
Artist. 

MARCH IN THE WINDRUSH VALLEY. (1904). In the possession of the Artist 

ON THE Reuss, LucERNE. (1906). In the possession of the Artist. 

VESUVIUS FROM Batagz. (1906). In the possession of the Artist. 

Tue Power StaTIoN. (1907). Jn the possession of the Artist. 

PARHAM. (1907). Jn the possession of the Artist. 

EDEN VALLEY FROM MurTON PIKE. (1909). In the possession of the Artist. 

RIDGES OF SADDLEBACK. (1910). Replica of picture in the possession of 
Prof. Sir Michael Sadler, K.C.S.1. 

SADDLEBACK FROM THE SOUTH-WEST. (1910). In the possession of Reginald 
Cripps, Esq. 

BupE BREAKWATER. (1911). Jn the possession of the Artist. 


DuFrTON PIKE FROM BACKSTONE EDGE. (1913). In the possession of the 
Artst. 


WELLINGBOROUGH. (1913). In the possession of Prof. Sir Michael Sadler, 
RCSL. : 


Leeps. (1913). In the possession of Prof. Sir Michael Sadler, K.C.S.I. 

HoiMes STATION. (1914). Jn the possession of Prof. Sir Michael Sadler, 
K.C.S.I. 

A Cotton Mit. (1914). Jn the possession of the Artist. 

CHIMNEY IN SHEFFIELD. (1914). In the possession of the Artist. 


23: 
24. 
2h. 
26. 
27 
28. 


29. 


30. 
31. 
32. 
33. 
34. 
35. 


LIST? ORR ESE 


Brick Cupotas. (1914). In the possession of the Artist. 

CROSSFELL, EASTER SUNDAY. (1915). In the possession of the Artist. 

THE Pink MILL. (1916). In the possession of the Artist. 

WHINFELL ; DouBLE RaInBow. (1917). Jn the possession of the Artist. 

WHERNSIDE. (1917). In the possession of the Artist. 

RossetT GILL. (1917). In the possession o the Artist. 

ROTHERHAM : YORKSHIRE CAMPAGNA F. (1918). In the possession of the 
Artist. 

STEEL, PEECH, AND 'TOZER’s. (1918). In the possession of Lady Holmes. 

Howelii Feits. (1919). In the possession of W. H. Woodward, Esq. 

THE CARPENTER’S SHOP. (1921). In the possession of the Artist. 

THE ALPS FROM AVIGNON. (1921). In the possession of the Artist. 

PAPAL PALACE, AVIGNON. (1922). In the possession of the Artist. 

PENDRAGON CASTLE. (1923). In the possession of the Artist. 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


F pressed C. J. Holmes’s fellow-artists would probably 
Jones that while they admit his presence in the front 
row of living landscape painters they also regard him 
as something between a freak and a spoilt child of fortune. 
Readily conceding his originality and conspicuous accom- 
plishment, they would somehow feel that he has gained his 
place and accomplishment by rather mysterious if not unfair 
means. Expressed or inarticulate their feeling might be 
roughly paraphrased as follows. ‘‘ Here is Holmes in this 
front rank, with every right to be there. But is there not some- 
thing rather irregular about it? He has never been to an art 
school, he is not a whole-time artist, and his record as an 
artist is chequered with suspicious adventures. In a mis- 
guided youth he went to Eton and Oxford ; he entered business ; 
he became an editor, an author and professor, recklessly 
exhibiting a varied and disconcerting scholarship in old- 
masterish fields. And as if that were not quite enough he has 
already directed a couple of galleries and turned into a Civil 
Servant. How can a fellow with this record be a ‘ pukka’ 
7 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


artist ? Now we are whole-time painters, students of real art 
schools, studio workers all our days. We are seldom seen at 
city banquets with bishops and judges and generals ; we do 
not edit magazines nor direct galleries. And yet it does not 
seem to have made much difference ; for Holmes’s work is 
indistinguishable from the genuine article. It is, in fact, a 
very funny thing that a man who has never done any regular 
recognised ‘ grind’ at drawing or painting should draw and 
paint so well. This short-cut business is hardly fair or moral, 
and may have a most demoralising effect on the young.” | 

One of the purposes of this little essay is to calm these 
fears and dissipate these doubts. In baldly recording Holmes’s 
career, so far, I shall not only strip him of all glamour and 
mystery, but I shall also prove that instead of giving cause for 
wonder, apprehension or subconscious soreness, Holmes is 
by no means an abnormal case. And we shall conclude that ~ 
any student who will submit himself to the rigid and continuous 
discipline which Holmes has undergone for some forty years 
will richly deserve what fruition comes to him. | 

Charles John Holmes was born on November rith, 1868. 
His father, a clergyman, and his uncle Sir Richard Holmes, 
both had a considerable amateur bent for water-colour paint- 
ing. ‘This for our purpose is important, because we may 
justly regard their habit as the jutting rock or eddy which at 
8 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


the start gave young Holmes’s interest its direction. Many 
boys regard art with active contempt, many regard it with 
amiable indifference and some with curiosity. Holmes, who was 
in the last category, was incited by his father’s and uncle’s 
attitude towards art to nourish this curiosity until it waxed 
into something stronger. From a school at Canterbury he 
went, in 1883, to Eton as a Colleger. His budding interest in 
art was strong enough to keep alive at Eton, where I suppose 
the bracing winds of Philistia were just as nipping as at other 
public schools in the eighties. He managed to keep up his 
drawing, making now little essays in the manner of Turner 
or Copley Fielding, now dry little experiments in tree drawing. 
The foliage of elm trees specially engaged him. But the most 
important experience he had at Eton was Ruskin’s Modern 
Painters, which he gulped down with the faith of a disciple. 
This confirmed him in his cult of Turner. I will leave it to 
more observant eyes to detect the spark of genius in these 
Eton drawings, which are quite unaccomplished schoolboy 
efforts, dry and fiddling in touch and for the most part totally 
impersonal. The important points about them are this same 
ordinary inferiority and their persistence, which indicates 
that drawing was becoming Holmes’s chief concern, apart 
from the things which, as a normal contentious schoolboy, he 


was bound to take into account. 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


A holiday in the Lakes in 1886 gave him opportunities for 
applying to Nature what he had derived from Ruskin, Turner 
and such odd prints and pictures as had come his way. Several 
very conscientious little paintings were made in sepia and 
Payne’s grey of sunset effects over lakes and mountains, some 
based on Nature alone, others distilled through his memory of 
Turner. In 1887 Holmes went with a scholarship to Brase- 
nose College, Oxford, and that autumn visited Scotland, where 
his penchant for romantic scenery was of course intensified. 
In a little drawing of Dunolly done at this time we can just see, 
unless I am deceived, the crude germ of his much later style. 
In the blue rounded mountain-tops, strongly silhouetted, there 
is a hint of his later pallette and simplification. And in 
another of Loch Tay, with a viaduct across the foreground, 
and rather stark mountains against a whitish sky, we see the 
remote ancestor of a picture now lent to the Tate Gallery by 
Mr. Velten. As a rule, all these water-colours were derived 
from line drawings made from Nature, and coloured on the 
principles of Turner as applied to the remembered effect. I 
mention this because it throws some light on an enormously 
important part of Holmes’s education—the training of his 
memory. ‘To the uninitiated there is something almost in- 
explicable in the memory which he now possesses. But the 


explanation is quite simple. From the age of about fourteen 


10 


SIR) CHARLES HOLMES 


he has in turn filled a reservoir of impressions by ceaseless 
observation, and then as ceaselessly drawn on it by memory. 
Thus constantly checking and cross-checking he has tempered 
an unusually efficient instrument. I understand from him 
that any one can do the same. 

In 1887 Holmes discovered the pre-Raphaelites in the 
Manchester Loan Exhibition. In consequence one sees in 
the drawings of that date a new idea of the range of colour. 
By now he had been continually “ messing about ”’ in line 
and water-colour, mainly in crude emulation of Turner, for 
some four years. Naturally his work begins to improve, so that 
the drawings done during his Oxford days, between 1887-89, 
are less dry and scratchy, and express a certain amount of plein 
air and light. They are still quite ordinary and amateur, 
and save on occasions have no clear relation to his later style. 
The point, again, is that their number increases, and that every 
walk he took seems to have produced a drawing which in 
turn begat various experiments in colour. ‘Turner seems to 
have been laid aside for the moment, and something more like 
David Cox or Collier is the goal. So efficient had his memory 
become that some drawings of the Windrush exhibit subtle 
niceties of out-of-doors tone, light, wind and movement. For 
example, the glancing light and motion in a willow tree, and 


complicated skies, crowded with little cirrus forms, very 


II 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


accurately seen, were perpetually on Holmes’s mind at this 
period. And in the summer of 1889 he produced his first 
industrial landscape—Preston—a small but unmistakable pro- 
genitor of his well-known industrials. To close this school 
and college record I will note that in a few experimental 
instances Holmes was using a strong pencil outline in his 
water-colours ; not as the remains of the preliminary outline 
sketch, but as a superimposed contour with a special purpose. 
It should be borne in mind that so far he had not come across 
Japanese prints. On the other hand in 1889 he began to 
notice Constable, making a drawing of a Stour oil landscape, 
lent by a Mr. Miller to an exhibition in the Preston Corn 
Exchange. 

That autumn Holmes entered Rivington’s publishing 
business in London, and formed a habit to which he is still 
slave. He adopted as a motto “‘ Nulla dies sine linea,” and set 
apart half an hour after breakfast every morning for drawing. 
Confined to office all the week he devoted most of his Saturdays 
and Sundays to walks in suburban country, Wimbledon, 
Mitcham, Barnes, Richmond, Banstead, and the like. Each 
walk produced drawings which became the material for the 
daily half-hour’s exercise. By now his constant use of the 
pencil had resulted in a gain of expressive line. It is worth 


remarking that the pencil drawings in the sketch books are 


12 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


more advanced and interpretative than the resultant water- 
colours, though, pari passu, the use of wash is steadily im- 
proving. Residence in London carried with it access to the 
National Gallery, a place which Holmes haunts still. Crome 
seems to have impressed him at this date. Among the 
numerous drawings of this time those which I have called remote 
progenitors of Holmes’s later style became more frequent. 
But he had not yet formed a manner. Casual observation 
of a Corot, recollections of ‘Turner and Crome, and sometimes 
reversion to the amateur style of his Oxford days, are notice- 
able in the drawings of this period, round about 1890. Now 
he. joined an amateur sketching club, known as the Victoria 
Drawing Society, which promoted regular exhibits and mild 
competition. Having left Rivington’s in July, 1890, he was 
engaged at the printing office of Ballantyne from the autumn 
of 1890 until February or March, 1891. During the summer 
he worked in Edward Arnold’s publishing business, and in 
August visited Holland, there making carefully minute pencil 
drawings. ‘That winter he studied the antique at South 
Kensington, setting himself time limits of from two hours to 
fifteen minutes in which to make a drawing. A fresh course 
of Modern Painters led to ink drawings of plant form and 
a renewed appreciation of Turner, while Reynolds’s Dis- 
courses prompted a short series of ambitious essays in figure 

* 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


composition in the grand style. It is just worth record that in 
1892 Whistler attracted Holmes’s momentary regard. ‘The 
sketch books of these years, say 1890-93, are filled with experi- 
ments in various styles—pen and ink copies of Charles Keene 
and Du Maurier, pen and ink drawings in Pennell’s and Abbey’s 
manner ; delicately thorough studies of leafless trees, foliage 
and trunks; suddenly personal technique succeeded by 
transient ventures in the manner of others. But by 1893 the 
personal manner is increasingly frequent, and a quantity of 
summary notes made on buses or in the streets show how 
habitual had become the practice of swift notation. Thus 
Holmes eventually acquired the requisite speed of eye and 
hand to catch the essential elements of a subject seen from the 
train window. A few highly finished still-life paintings in 
water-colour were done at this time. 


In 1892 a change of business had a profound effect on his 
artistic career. He rejoined the firm of Ballantyne as book- 


keeper, and at the desk proper to that office made the acquaint- 
ance of Ricketts and Shannon, then publishing The Dial. 
This apparent accident gave him the benefit of professional 
advice and eventual introduction to the world of art and 
letters. And in persuading him to learn to draw by means of 
etching Ricketts did him a great service. The etchings fall 
between 1892 and 1897; there are some eighty-five plates, 
14 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


which bring home to us the amount of discipline in draughts- 
manship which Holmes underwent. They reflect various 
influences—that of Rembrandt, Haden, Legros, Holroyd and 
Strang ; but in the most important Holmes’s own personality 
is the chief thing. Most of these plates were etched from 
pen and ink drawings in which a free and sweeping line, and 
great attention to minute detail of architecture or tree form 
are conspicuous. ‘These pen and ink drawings are pro- 
fessionally accomplished in style and very different from 
the literal and amateur standard of most of the water-colours 
produced so far. For examples of the etchings see 
Plates 1-3. 

At about this date, say 1895, we can rule a line, dividing 
the groping and amateur productions of Holmes’s beginnings 
from his later, personal style. In other words, it had cost 
Holmes ten years of unaided experiment and general failure 
to reach the technical accomplishment of a three years’ art 
student. Into those ten years of spare-time work he put as much 
labour as the average keen student performs in his three years, 
with, I think, more profitable thought. For each tiny step he 
took was in the main due rather to his own reasoning and dis- 
covery than to a “‘tip”’ handed on by an expert practitioner. 
Every solution of a problem was, in Holmes’s case, something 
of a reasoned scientific achievement, dearly bought by months 

15 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


of experiment. From this hard training and personal dis- 
covery was developed his capacity to write, many years later, 
his Notes on the Science of Picture Making. 

The last step he took in reaching emancipation seems a large 
and sudden one. This is not unusual ; impetus once gained, 
pace seems to gather out of all proportion. But Holmes 
gratefully insists that the length of this last stride is largely 
due to William Strang, who with a diagram or two, so far as I 
can judge, finally opened Holmes’s eyes to the interpretative 
projective possibilities of line. Of course if Holmes had had 
the privilege of sitting under distinguished Professors in 
Gower Street he would have been made aware of this function 
of line in ten weeks, instead of ten years. It was, however, 
reserved for William Strang to give at the critical moment the 
most important push to Holmes’s development. 

Most of his earliest sketch books have been kept in order. 
No. XVII is dated 1898. I single it out because it probably 
is the first to which considerable value, on artistic grounds, 
will be attached. It records visits to Arbury, Dornoch, Lucerne ; 
Biasca, Florence, Pisa, Padua, and Verona. ‘Though in many 
ways its level is passed in important oils and water-colours of 
subsequent years, yet to my mind it has a novelty and fresh- 
ness, the zest of a first free flight, which give its little drawings 


—they are perhaps six inches square—a remarkable and 
16 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


enduring value. It is almost impossible to recognise in them 
the Holmes of 1892. | 

Picking up neglected biographical threads we note that in 
1892 Holmes had entered the publishing business of John 
Nimmo ; there he stayed till 1896. ‘Then he went to the Vale 
Press as manager. In 1899 he was in the Dedham country 
gathering material for his book on Constable, and paid a 
second visit to Dornoch. In 1900 drawings of Alresford and 
Itchenstoke occur, in 1901 of Bourton-on-the-Water and the 
Salisbury country where Holmes was occupied with Constable, 
and in 1902 of Cobham, Exeter, Risington, and Oxford. 

So far we have reviewed Holmes’s immature and accom- 
plished production in line drawing, an investigation taking us 
to 1902. ‘Ten years earlier he had begun to experiment in oils. 
For the sake of brevity we will group together as Holmes’s 
earliest period all the works done between 1892-1901. Few 
relics of this tentative phase remain, but they show that as 
regards personality and freedom of expression his first oils 
were considerably behind the contemporary drawings and 
etchings. The oils are low-toned, almost monochrome and 
now brown in colour, because they were painted on a raw 
umber preparation. Various influences are evident, mainly 
those of Gainsborough, Wilson, Rembrandt, Crome, and 


Constable, on whom he published a monograph in 1901. The 


B 17 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


very earliest relics, mostly painted over older pictures, are 
thickly painted. But by 1900, when he began to exhibit at 
the New English Art Club, Holmes was able to retain the 
surface of his canvas unclogged with paint, and to get a fair 
Wilsonian impasto where he needed it. By now, too, he was 
gaining a freer style of drawing with his brush, expressing 
the contours of trees with sure free line. This is seen in 
Wimbledon Common (Plate 4) and in March in the Windrush 
Valley (Plate 8), painted in 1904. The mention of three 
pictures typical of this dark but distinguished early period 
must suffice: The Gasometer (Plate 5), The Barn and Wimbledon 
Common (Plate 4), all of 1900. ‘These indicate the simple, 
grave mood and telling spacing of his first efforts. In 1902 
an attempt was made to reach a higher key, and the use of 
viridian in place of brown greens appears. At this point 
Holmes was struck by the potential utility of Daumier’s style, 
if applied to landscape painting. The Old Sarum of 1902 
(Plate 6) is an impressive result of this investigation. This 
interest in Daumier was, however, no more than a fortification 
of the theory and practice which had been slowly developing 
in the sketch books. I will note here that though he had 
published monographs in 1897-8 on Hiroshige and Hokusai, 
Japanese influence does not appear in his work till some years 


later. 
18 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


In the summer of 1903 Holmes married Miss Rivington 
and travelled in Switzerland, drawing as he went—the Rigi, 
the Myten, the Wellhorn, and so forth. While at Appleby in 
August he accepted the editorship of the Burlington Magazine. 
This step was singularly important in his artistic career because 
he found it impossible to divorce the theories, research and 
discoveries incidental to the output of an energetic editor from 
the pictorial production of that same editor’s spare time. 
The discoveries he made in analysing old masters, or in 
investigating such phenomena as sale-room prices, fashion in 
pictures, reputations of schools, etc., were not locked up in 
the editorial attic, at the end of the day, but taken home and 
applied in his studio. Hence we find in his work from now 
on an increasing interplay of intellectual criticism and practical 
experiment. 

Pictures of 1903-4 are the Portsmouth Road, now in 
New Zealand, and the Shreckhorn and Finsteraarhorn (Plate 7). 
In the latter, with its radiant airy key, exact spacing and 
comprehension of the mountain mood we see, as far as his 
oils are concerned, a new Holmes. But the clue to this 
apparently novel manifestation is in the earlier sketch books, 
culminating in that of his 1903 Swiss trip, and in his sym- 
pathy with Hokusai and Hiroshige. These sketch books show 
the slow evolution of his grasp of essentials. His particular 

a 


SIR. CHARLES HOLMES 


method of using Nature, which I have described, had developed 
a quick and summarising eye and an unusual memory for 
salient lines and structure. 

From the schoolboy drawings up to the present there is no 
break in the continuity of Holmes’s development. If the 
casual tributaries which from time to time have swelled the 
main stream of his art be noted: if we bear in mind that 
after a late spring—he was thirty-two when he began exhibiting 
—he rapidly advanced towards maturity—his Shreckhorn is 
but three and two years later than the Gasometer and Old 
Sarum respectively : if, moreover, we constantly allow for 
the logical, inquisitive, and shrewd nature of his intellect, 
which is always analysing phenomena and worrying out their 
causes and effects, Holmes becomes one of the most explicable 
people. 

I have detailed his development so far, refusing the reader 
any solace of philosophical reflexions, because it seemed 
important to record such facts and information as usually are 
neglected till first-hand evidence is no longer available to light 
up an artist’s obscure beginnings. Now we can relax and 
wallow in theory and ethics. Fortunately for us Holmes has 
crystallised his ethics of art in Notes on the Science of Picture 
Making, published in 1909. ‘These notes originally served as 


material for lectures given from the Slade Professor’s chair at 


20 


SIR) CHARLES HOLMES 


Oxford, to which Holmes was elected in December 1904. 
We have earlier evidence of his endeavour to reduce criticism 
of pictures to something like a demonstrable science, in an 
article in the November 1904 number of the Burlington 
Magazine. In September 1906 he began a series of sketch 
books devoted to the discovery of how to transmute transcripts 
of Nature into good art. ‘Taking old sketches as material 
Holmes began to experiment in chalk, wash, and colour, intent 
on reaching some conclusion as to what should be the form 
which would satisfy his creed. This creed, as I have said, is 
reduced to black and white in Notes on the Science of Picture 
Making, published more than two years later. Few books on 
the practice and principles of art are as sound and stimulating. 
As regards these sketch books I will note that on an average 
each contains about seventy experiments, and that every year 
since 1906 has produced two books. 

Here I can but “ pot’”’ certain of his conclusions which 
more particularly bear upon his painting. Foremost of all is 
this: ‘‘ The artist’s personal experience must be emphasised 
by emotion, or the result is not art.” As regards the expression 
of this emotion precedence is given to this: “ Pictorial design 
is Emphasis subject to pictorial conditions.” Apeing the camera 
leads nowhere ; a pictorial symbol must be used which has a 
relation both to Nature and to Art; if we neglect the relation 


21 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


to Nature our work will be shallow and mannered; if we 
neglect the relation to Art it will be bad painting. This symbol 
must have vitality to preserve the impression of something 
alive and sentient. For example, pen lines seize only the 
essential features ; they state them with the utmost possible 
clearness, the very swiftness of the strokes echoing the vigour 
of the draughtsman. But the painter, instead of concentrating 
on the essential features of his design, may bury them under a 
mass of trifles, and instead of stating them swiftly and fluently 
may work them up to a conventional polish. 

The creed of emphasis and selection of and concentration 
upon essentials does not imply a denial of Nature; for how 
can an artist recognise essentials unless he knows his subject 
by heart? All point work naturally seizes on contour and © 
structure. The perfect pictorial symbol suggests life and 
vigour by the seeming ease and swiftness of its execution, which 
are gained only after great labour and long practice. But 
this swiftness is admissible only in treating essentials ; if they 
are not grasped the result is shallow mannerism. 

But there are other things besides Vitality. There is 
Infinity. The quality which separates the true draughtsman 
from the clever drawing master is an intense sympathy with 

1 Cf. Leopardi’s comment that the appearance of carelessness in poetry is 


beautiful, but it is the result of art and labour. 


22 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


the exquisite refinement of Nature. We can only hope to 
interpret Nature by symbols; but they will not be symbols of 
Nature if they have not something of her infinite variety and 
subtlety. To inspire our symbols with vitality we must set 
them down quickly ; but we must have ever in our minds the 
character and complexity of the things those symbols represent. 
We must know, love, and respect Nature, never relying on 
mere dexterity of hand, mere habit of touch. Though we may 
temporarily deceive by an appearance of vigour, in the end — 
our emptiness will be recognised. 

This in brief, and crudely put, is the programme which 
from about 1905 Holmes has adopted. It will be fair criticism 
to say that the more completely, in all respects, he has carried 
out his programme the more successful has been his art. 

As regards the emotional quality of Holmes’s art this, 
perhaps, should be said. ‘To many landscape painters a 
picture is, as it were, a passive plate on which the emotion 
derived from Nature is spontaneously reproduced. They 
hardly apprehend pictorial devices as active agents, with a 
vitality of their own, which may enhance the expression of the 
artist’s original emotion. They do not to any marked extent 
recognise that in rhythm, colour, proportion and emphasis 
the artist has independent, if contributory, means of so 
intensifying his expression that the emotion inspired by 

23 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


Nature can be rendered in deliberately heightened terms. To 
Holmes, -on the other hand, the possibilities of these technical 
properties as independent agencies, capable of this intensifica- 
tion, are only second in importance to the spontaneous emotion 
aroused by Nature. It is not enough that an undefined 
enthusiasm is excited by Vesuvius from Baiae (Plate 10), by a 
barn and trees at Parham (Plate 12) silhouetted against the 
sky ; by the piled remoteness of Rossett Gill (Plate 28); by 
the sinister and stricken character of Industrial districts—for 
example, Brick Cupolas (Plate 23), a Chimney in Sheffield 
(Plate 22), and Leeds (Plate 19), or by the romantic massing of 
The Papal Palace (Plate 34). Holmes is aware that the actual 
placing and proportion of the features in Nature, the mutual 
incidence of horizontals, diagonals, and perpendiculars, as for 
instance in Holmes Station (Plate 20), and the relation of 
reposeful to unquiet passages have an intimate bearing on the 
enthusiasm aroused. In short, he is conscious that emotion 
is raised to a higher temperature by one arrangement of 
spacing, rhythm, and proportion than by another. No 
trouble, then, should be spared to achieve in the expression of 
this emotion the mot juste of rhythm, tone, colour, and pro- 
portion. For instance, the Burning Kiln (1914), in the Tate 
Gallery, was determined after many trials, some with a light 
sky, some with a longer picture, others with different emphasis 
24 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


and spacing. I think that if we asked him to pick out the 
picture which in many ways seems to him most successfully 
to combine the Infinity and Vitality of mood and execution, 
he would select Saddleback from the South-west (Plate 15). 

It is clear that Holmes’s appreciation of the vitally expres- 
sive property of line, strengthened by his admiration for Chinese 
and Japanese art, determined what symbol he should use. 
His mature water-colours are the logical development of the 
style he had evolved in line drawings by 1895. His oils, 
starting in the manner of Crome, Wilson, Gainsborough, and 
Corot (see Plates 4, 5, 8, and 12), began in 1904, in the Shreck- 
horn, to change into a more personal style, akin to that he was 
then hammering out in his water-colours. 

Henceforward, starting from On the Reuss (Plate 9), we 
find in oils and water-colours alike a frank use of the line 
symbol, emphasising the essentials of structure and contour, 
and suggesting the ease of a swift line drawing. In such 
examples as Parham (Plate 12), Ridges of Saddleback (Plate 14), 
Bude Breakwater (Plate 16), Dufton Pike (Plate 17), and the 
Industrials (Plates 18-23), ranging from 1907 to 1914, we see 
at once the justification of this choice of symbol when backed 
up by consistent treatment throughout. By no other symbol 
could the external qualities on which Holmes then set most 


value have been so well expressed—elemental structure, 


25 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


simplification, and emphatic pattern. In no other way could 
such economy of means have been achieved. By themselves, 
though, these qualities would not have been enough. It is 
easy to recall works possessing all, which yet fail to illumine. 
For we ate not conscious that behind them is a mind which has 
apprehended higher and deeper meanings. But these pictures 
show that the qualities in Nature to which Holmes responds— 
the things which seem to him to matter most—are not ordinary 
and obvious. And, what is more important still, he succeeds in 
communicating to us something of his more sensitive percep- 
tion and deeper knowledge, thus extending ours. So that 
henceforth we see the forms and silhouettes of mountains, 
furnaces and shafts with a richer comprehension of their 
significance. 

Specialists on dimensional questions will immediately 
detect in these pictures of, say, 1906-10 a tendency to design 
from side to side rather than from front to distance. Holmes, 
too, was aware of this result of what may be called the Japanese 
method. In Eden Valley (Plate 13), painted in 1909, we have 
an early instance of his determination to carry his design back 
into the distance. Broadly speaking this intention marks the 
difference between his work of thirteen years ago and that of 
to-day. If we compare Ridges of Saddleback (Plate 14), 


painted in 1910, or Bude Breakwater (Plate 16) of 1911, with 
26 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


Dufton Pike (Plate 17), Crossfell (Plate 24), Whinfell (Plate 26), 
_ Whernside (Plate 27) of 1917, which in my judgment is one of 
his finest and most personal achievements as a colourist, and 
Howgill Fells (Plate 31), of 1919, we see at once how much 
more sculptural, projective and recessive his work has become. 
And reference to The Carpenter’s Shop (Plate 32), of 1921, 
shows us how much more complex and rich his later designs 
have become, in comparison with the single-motif com- 
positions of his earlier works. 

In his mountain, architectural and industrial subjects 
Holmes has created types. His mountains, barns, and factories 
will not be confused with those of any other original painter. 
Occasionally, in for instance The Pink Mill (Plate 25), which 
does not at first sight fit in with the accepted ‘“‘ Holmes,” we 
encounter a surprise. His Industrials fall into two main 
groups. Although his Power Station (Plate 11) was painted 
in 1907 we do not get a sequence of such subjects before 1913. 
To that time belongs the Industrial Sketch Book, in Sir Michael 
Sadler’s possession. ‘The other large group falls round 1918 
and is chiefly due to the commission Holmes received to paint 
a munitions factory for the Imperial War Museum. In our 
illustrations of his Industrials we recognise again le mot juste 
of spacing and proportion, and the special rightness of his 
choice of symbol. Short experiments will demonstrate that 

27 


SIR: CHARLES HOLMES 


the science underlying the placing of each stack or coil of 
smoke, the proportion of masses, and the relation of restful 
spaces to spaces troubled by belching fumes and harsh, staccato 
lines, is singularly just. By as much as we change his spacing 
and proportion, by so much we weaken the effect. These 
Industrials strikingly reveal also that experience of profounder 
meaning to which I have alluded. Once we have seen Holmes’s 
Leeds (Plate 19), with its drenching gloom and feverish move- 
ment, its stagnant streams and turbid, sluggish sky ; when we 
have apprehended the sinister power of his Brick Cupolas 
(Plate 23), relentlessly to endure in a stricken and deserted 
land, and grasped the significance to modern life of that deadly 
iteration of mechanical units, so masterly exposed in Chimney 
in Sheffield, the aspect of industrial landscape is for us full of 
new meaning. In A Cotton Mill (Plate 21) the mitigating power 
of gentle sunlight is recognised. For a brief hour of summer 
afternoon, spellbound in the sunny haze, mill and wharf yield 
up their grimness to take on a classic, Claude-like mystery. 
In Rotherham: Yorkshire Campagna F (Plate 29), one of a 
Campagna series, done in 1918, a similar benignant and 
passive spirit presides. Against the deep blue of summer the 
lazy mass of steely smoke, so menacing against a leaden sky, 
surprises us by its exquisite and gracious beauty. The water- 
colour of Steel, Peech and Tozer’s Works (Plate 30), made in 
28 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


1918, typifies the lighter and more economic touch of Holmes’s 
later water-colours. ‘ 

But, surely, we have thirty-five plates to illustrate Holmes’s 
‘development from 1894 to 1923. Convinced by some experience 
that most people have a healthy objection to the text of illus- 
trated books, the writer can the more readily commend his 
reader to apply to these plates for all zsthetic information. 
One point only keeps us from completing our summary of 
Holmes’s biography. In his Confession of Faith, already quoted, 
while warning the artist against burying the essential features 
of his design under a mass of trifles, he stresses the need of 
sympathy with the exquisite refinement of Nature: “‘ We can 
only hope to interpret Nature by symbols, but they will not be 
symbols of Nature if they have not something of her infinite 
variety and subtlety.’’ Reviewing Holmes’s output one is often 
struck by an unusual and personal subtlety of tone, colour, 
and atmosphere. For example, we would be prepared to 
swear that A Cotton Mill and Leeds, Howgill Fells, Crossfell 
(Plate 24), and Whinfell (Plate 26), with their instantaneous 
quality of light and shade, or The Alps from Avignon (Plate 33), 
with its complicated sky and its plain crowded with various 
detail, must have been painted on the spot or from elaborate 
studies. The essential features of such designs, and the salient 
impressions of colour, tone, and atmosphere are noted on the 

29 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


spot with a vigour and swiftness of line drawing probably 
unshared by any of Holmes’s contemporaries.: But for the 
rest he relies on memory. And so quick and trained is his percep- 
tion of what he needs, so sensitive and retentive his memory, 
conscious and subconscious, that he seldom fails to endue his 
symbols with Nature’s fluid subtlety. By thus relying on his 
first deep-bitten impression of essentials, he is spared much 
of the temptation to amass irrelevant blurring detail. 

We broke off our summary of Holmes’s biography at 1904, 
when he was Editor of the Burlington Magazine and Slade 
Professor at Oxford. ‘That year he was elected member of the 
New English Art Club, the only Society he joined till 1924. 
In 1909 he was appointed Director of the National Portrait 
Gallery in Mr. Lionel Cust’s place. In 1914-15 he enlisted in 
the R.N.V.R., serving as A.B. in the Anti-Aircraft Corps. 
On the retirement of Sir Charles Holroyd in 1916, he 
was made Director of the National Gallery, and knighted 
in 1921. Besides his Hokusai and Hiroshige (1897-8), his 
Constable (1901 and 1902), and the Notes on the Science of 
Picture Making (1909), he has published Pictures and Picture 
Collecting, Notes on the Art of Rembrandt (1911), The Tarn 
and the Lake (1913), short works on Leonardo da Vinci and 
Constable’s drawings, and The National Gallery: Italian 

* In one day’s excursion he can make forty working drawings. 


30 


SIR CHARLES HOLMES 


Schools (1923). In 1924 he became an Associate of the Royal 
Society of Painters in Water-Colour. The following public 
galleries have works by him: The Tate Gallery, British 
Museum, Manchester, Johannesburg, the Ashmolean, Oxford, 
and the Melbourne Gallery. 

In general Holmes finds the material for his work in the 
North Country, his present base being Appleby. For future 
reference, however, the following dates and exceptional locali- 
ties should be noted: 1905, Bude; 1906, Italy—the Abruzzi 
—Naples, Orvieto; 1907, Littlehampton; 1911, Tenby ; 
1914, Lyme Regis ; 1921, South of France. 

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